When you try to describe how likely something that will happen in the future is to someone, how do they interpret what you mean?
For instance, if you say something will a "slam dunk", will they interpret that as having 100% odds of happening? Or will they assign a lower chance to whatever that is occurring?
What if you're the person on the receiving end of the probabilitistic statement? Would you say something you're told has a "real possibility" of occurring is more or less likely to happen than if the same person told you something had a "serious possibility" of occurring?
Words mean things, and when it comes to describing probabilities, they come with their own probability distributions. That's the finding of Andrew Mauboussin and Michael J. Mauboussin from their 2018 paper, If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?, in which they presented the results of their study into that topic. Better yet, they provided the following chart to illustrate the probability distributions the participants in their study helped them develop for various common words and phrases that American English speakers use in everyday language.
Here's how the Mauboussins describe their findings:
The wide variation of likelihood people attach to certain words immediately jumps out. While some are construed quite narrowly, others are broadly interpreted. Most — but not all — people think “always” means “100% of the time,” for example, but the probability range that most attribute to an event with a “real possibility” of happening spans about 20% to 80%. In general, we found that the word “possible” and its variations have wide ranges and invite confusion.
The cool thing about this chart is that if you are searching for words to describe the likelihood of something that will happen in the future, you now have a useful guide to help you convey the odds you're trying to communicate.
More often than not, with a high probability of getting your intended message across.
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